I read an article or two were kinda kinda on the subject, and unfortunately this may be a bit of a special case. There's more and more evidence to suggest that most people aren't actually allergic to peanuts, but actually something in the way they process and treat them.
Sorry, too lazy to look it up, but apparently in like the last 20 years or so they've started cleaning peanuts grown with a certain sort of chemical bath or something? and that another study discovered that peanuts prepared without this process didn't actually cause a reaction in most people that have "peanut" allergies.
It would certainly explain why the number of people with the allergy have more than tripled in that time frame.

Sometimes I think about what might have happened if we never figured out I had a walnut allergy (I thought everyone who ate walnuts experienced a scratchy throat, like how everyone who eats spicy foods experiences the burning) - I hesitated to bring it up to my parents because I thought I was just being a picky eater.

I'm the same way with pistachios, except it's less "scratchy" & more "unbearable burning sensation as if I'd just eaten a raw habanero". There's hella pistachios in certain Italian desserts. :-/